--- Bryon Daly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Oddly, the guy wasn't at all racist, as far as I > could tell, and he was from > Wisconsin, so I don't think it was about him > protecting his southern pride. > The only thing I can think of is that some favorite > teacher taught him that > the Civil War wasn't about slavery, and he'd latched > into it and refused to > let go despite the facts.
The racism is in the past now, fortunately enough, but it's effects linger, of course. I would blame (and it is _blame_) the claim that the Civil War was not about race on the "Lost Cause" school of Southern historians, who were desperate to redeem their (genuinely) valiant struggle in an equally (genuinely) bad cause, and so decided to claim that it was about something other than slavery, and deified Robert E. Lee (surely the most overrated General in American history, much to the detriment of the truly extraordinary Grant, who can surely make a case for greatest non-Washington general in American history). Anyways - if you want to talk about Lincoln, I'd love to :-) That's a topic that I'm never going to get bored with. Best Lincoln book I've read recently is Eliot Cohen's Supreme Command, btw, which I've praised on the list before. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
